


Free

by assuwatar



Category: Late Bronze Age
Genre: Aromantic Asexual Character, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Swordfighting, file this under: stories that should've made me realise I'm aroace, they weren't intended to be but in retrospect c l e a r l y
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-24
Updated: 2020-04-24
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:47:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23793349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/assuwatar/pseuds/assuwatar
Summary: The Aegean Bronze Age has come crashing to an end. All trace of its glory is steadily slipping away. Only one island survives untouched, and in its silence, a queen and a peasant meet in a duel over the memory of the past.
Kudos: 5





	Free

**Author's Note:**

> This is a translation of a story I originally wrote in French a few years ago.

Eleutheria was alone. Not a ship on the horizon; the sea sparkled, turquoise underneath a turquoise sky. The whisper of waves on the rocks was almost human, but it was a voice that did not speak, and the bay was empty, and the only prints left on the sand tasted of salt.

Eleutheria rolled up the papyrus she was reading, placed it under a rock, and swung her legs over the cliff's edge. Foam blossomed beneath her bare feet. Some days, it seemed to reach for the heights, for the woman upon them, spreading across the sea surface and creeping along the cliff before leaping, then, inevitably, crashing back down. Today, it slumbered. Eleutheria wiggled her toes as if to tickle it from two hundred cubits away. Men sometimes called the moods of the sea treacherous. They thought it accountable to them. They were wrong.

Once, a man had promised Eleutheria to tame the sea. He had stood where she sat now, hands on his hips, bronze greaves on his legs. His words tumbled too easily out of his mouth, and when Eleutheria turned away to gaze at the horizon, he laughed.

‘All you can see,’ he said, ‘I could win it for you, and more. Sailors from Tyros to the Shekelesh lands honour and fear me. With you at my side, we could rule over the entire sea. Do you want the sea, princess?’

When they crossed swords that evening, she did not grant him time to play with her. She cornered him against the parapet of the terrace, her _hekwetai_ soberly gathered around them, and she said nothing. There was no need. He understood for himself – he was still reflecting on it now, as fish chewed the white fat of his belly and his bones washed up against the shore.

The sea belonged to no one.

That man was not the last; others would come, drawn by the legend that those she spared disseminated. The wind was quick to erase their footsteps. Eleutheria watched their sails vanish, then returned to her tablets and papyri. None of those men mattered to her. The sky and the endlessness of the sea contained all their emotions, and in silence.

Eleutheria closed her eyes and turned her face to the sun, letting the light paint her inner eyelids red. She was alone, and the waves whispered at the foot of the cliff, and her _hekwetai_ kept watch over the palace, and she was happy.

* * *

Lykos lay down on the deck, reached over the side of the boat, and filled the palm of his hand with water to pour it down his neck. The coolness only lasted a second before evaporating in the hot summer sun. Lykos stood back up and wiped his forehead. In Mykenai, at least, he could have sought refuge in the shaft graves and tablet depots of the ancient palace; but there was no respite here, beneath this flame-blue sky.

A gust of wind pushed the boat to the right, and Lykos took the helm to put it back on course. The island was becoming clearer against the horizon. Its cliffs rose darkly above the surf, softening into a bay on the north side, and the building on the plateau was painted in shadows and light, in red and blue, in reflections sometimes blurring, sometimes accentuating its outline against the rocks. Lykos held a hand above his eyes. Like everyone, he had heard the rumours. It was said a sorceress, according to some a goddess, lived there. It was said she had watched serenely as the world collapsed. It was said her servants had no tongue, and the whole island was cloaked in silence. It was said the sands of the bay were littered with bones...

Lykos dropped his hand and adjusted the sail, then sat on the planks. It was also said the sorceress kept the last tablets of the Akhaiwoi. If this journey proved the man right, it would be worth every other rumour, even true. Lykos might die on the island. But he would not die curious.

For the walls of the ancient palace in Mykenai whispered, the frescoes glanced at each other, the empty _pithoi_ called from wide open mouths, the words on the tablets were fractured by mysteries. Whose feet had hollowed the stones of this hallway? Whose thighs had shaped this throne? The villagers said it made no difference – their bones had turned to dust, why ask?

And yet they had built these walls and chiselled the lions that guarded them, and their souls still permeated the land. And they had lived. Was that not reason enough to wonder?

Lykos had not hesitated long before sailing towards the sorceress' island. As soon as he had heard of it, he had walked to the nearest port and rowed on a merchant's ship for a season to buy himself a small boat. The seller laughed in his face when Lykos told him where he was going. _Mataie_ , he called him – witless. Lykos did not reply. He was used to it.

The sea, however, kept quiet when he embarked on his journey. Lykos had disappeared into its vastness like a drop of blood into the earth, like the kings in their ruined palace. Here, in this solitude, in this silence, only they mattered. And Lykos.

And his curiosity, egging him on towards the bay shimmering in the late morning sun.

* * *

Out of the corner of her eye, Eleutheria glimpsed a silhouette slipping out onto the terrace. She turned around. The _hekwetis_ ' tunic rippled in the breeze, alive against unmoving skin, stark against pale walls. Wordlessly, she pointed at the bay. Eleutheria looked down. A boat rocked on the waves and made for the beach, its blue sail melting into the hues of the sea.

Eleutheria pinched her lips. Yet another stranger come to set eyes upon her. Come to impose words on her silence. She knelt, gathered her tablets and papyri, hugged them to her chest and stepped lithely up the path to the palace. She had been too busy with her thoughts to notice the boat; as she reached the terrace stairs, she bowed her head at the _hekwetis_ to thank her. She had given Eleutheria time to make preparations.

By the time the man appeared on the plateau, Eleutheria was standing before the doors, hair bound and hands clasped in front of her. The _hekwetai_ were silent at her back. The man stopped once or twice on the path, and Eleutheria squinted to observe his movements, but she did not move. The sword was cold against her hip. She could wait.

The man had a mane of black hair, almost too long for an Akhaiwos, but the tunic he wore, dark and loose, belonged without a doubt to that people. From time to time he would pull it back up onto his shoulder, or wipe his forehead with it. He had a humble face, without the low brow of Alashiya men or the severe nose of those of Aššur, and his skin burnt by salt and sun gleamed with sweat. He gazed at the landscape as he walked.

When he reached the foot of the stairs, he stopped. The corners of his mouth curled into a smile.

‘ _Khaire, wanassa_ _,_ ’ he greeted her. ‘You have ink on your fingers.’

Eleutheria winced at the sound of his voice. She listened to the sea sough behind her, stretch, curve its back, huddle against the cliff, and she let the calm last a moment more. Once she spoke, the man would use her words to ensnare her. Tongues always measured themselves against each other before swords did.

She pressed her thumbs against her index fingers.

‘ _Khaire_ , stranger. How do you know it is ink?’

‘I bartered some off a scribe from Kemet several seasons ago. I can recognise ink when I see it, _wanassa_.’

‘You know how to read.’

The man shrugged.

‘A little.’

Eleutheria lifted her chin without answering. He must be a prince, the son of a rich governor who had learnt the old glyphs in the hopes of ruling through them. Perhaps he intended to reassemble the shattered world around the one piece that still survived. Or perhaps he sought only fame. By sunset, it would no longer matter.

The man rubbed his nape with a hand.

‘I assume you write often, _wanassa_.’

‘Occasionally.’

‘What do you write?’

‘Why should you care?’

The man shrugged again.

‘No good reason. I am curious, that is all.’

He was smiling again. Eleutheria watched him warily. He did not look like a prince, though his words betrayed him. His voice lingered in his throat, his eyes drifted down, his arms hung awkwardly at his sides.

‘I write myths,’ she said at last.

The man raised an eyebrow.

‘Why myths?’

‘They speak to me of the world without the world needing to speak to me.’

Her voice was still hoarse from not having been used for months, but her tone was clear. The man tilted his head to one side.

‘I understand. The world is talkative. Too much, in my opinion. It is better to retreat into the quiet and listen to glyphs that do not disturb it.’

‘You mock me.’

The man's brow furrowed.

‘What makes you think that?’

‘You are not the first.’

Eleutheria ran a finger over the hilt of her sword. The sun, almost at its zenith, warmed her skin. The breath she took was relaxed. Confident.

‘Why are you here?’

No embarrassment, no hesitation in the man's face.

‘I seek tablets, _wanassa_.’

‘Tablets?’

Eleutheria folded her hands back into each other. That was a new excuse.

‘Tablets from Mykenai,’ the man specified. ‘I was born in a village close to the old palace, you see. I always wondered who had walked those hallways before me. I was hoping you could offer me an answer or two. Otherwise, I am afraid the ruins will never stop whispering behind my back.’

He stifled a chuckle, then added:

‘I was not lying, _wanassa_. I am a lover of silence and study, too. I only seek knowledge. Nothing more.’

Eleutheria contemplated him, resisting the urge to pace along the terrace. Sweat pearled on the stranger's temples, but he made no move to dry it. Perhaps he had forgotten about it. To tell the truth, he did not seem like a man who cared about his looks.

‘You will not see my tablets,’ she declared. ‘No stranger enters my palace. Even less my library.’

The man crossed his arms, unperturbed.

‘I expect you will not let me leave without drawing your sword, either.’

Eleutheria nodded. The man tapped a – nervous? – finger against his elbow.

‘I have heard much about you. You let some of your opponents escape alive. Others are never seen again. What I offer you,’ the man said, ‘is my life. Win and you may execute me. I will put up no fight. But if you lose the duel, you will let me read your tablets. What do you say?’

His nonchalance contrasted with the weight of his words. Eleutheria listened to them slip past her, echo from column to column, rise through the heat. Their boldness vanished into the open sky. As the one who had spoken them would.

Eleutheria moistened her lips.

‘Come up.’

The man obeyed, drawing a sword from his belt. He halted five steps away from Eleutheria.

‘I take it you will keep your word if I win?’

Eleutheria said nothing. He would be dead before noon.

* * *

It was said the sorceress had never lost a duel. Lykos forced himself not to think of it as he positioned himself opposite her.

She unsheathed her sword with a deft flick of the wrist and placed one foot in front of the other, toes pointed. Her flounced skirt fluttered against her knees. The women of Mykenai wore similar skirts, but longer, more roughly woven, and far less colourful – sad echoes of the processions of princesses on the ancient palace's walls. Travellers were not wrong in calling this sorceress a relic from lost times.

And Lykos was here, today, facing her. The past brushing against his fingertips.

He would not back down.

He attacked first, feinting to the left then aiming for his adversary's right flank. She did not flinch. She raised her arm, the rest of her body motionless, and parried, deflecting Lykos' blade towards the ground. He tightened his grasp around the hilt and took up his position again. The sorceress' eyes did not leave him.

She darted forward, and he twisted away a heartbeat before the sword point pierced his tunic. He retaliated at once, tracing a half-circle through the air. She stepped back. Her bare feet padded against the flagstones without a sound. Like an illusion.

‘I read tablets describing warrior women,’ Lykos said. ‘The villagers near Mykenai did not believe me. They said it was only a myth.’

The sorceress kept quiet.

‘How many men have you defeated?’

She slunk towards the right, circling him.

‘Over a hundred.’

‘How many left the island?’

‘Seven.’

She lunged forward, and their blades caught each other with a clang. Lykos pushed harder. The sorceress pushed back. Her eyes crossed his for a brief moment. They were strangely calm, the colour of baked clay.

Abruptly, Lykos spun sideways. Their swords broke contact, and the sun set the sorceress' blade aflame as she caught her balance. Lykos found himself among the grey-clad servants lining the back of the terrace. They observed him without a single word, a single movement, a single emotion even as he turned back to face his opponent. He took several breaths and steadied the weapon in his hand.

She fought well. Too well. She moved confidently, and her limbs were supple in a way Lykos' were not. But there was something in her methods he was beginning to understand. He pressed his lips together. After deciphering so many tablets, he had learnt to recognise patterns.

All it took was a single sign.

‘Why did you let those seven leave?’

‘I have a reputation to uphold.’

‘Believe me, no less stories would be told about you if you had spared only one.’

The sorceress' sword flashed towards Lykos' stomach. He raised his arm just in time and their blades met once, twice, thrice. The sorceress fell back.

‘Perhaps they were less arrogant than the others. Why do you speak while you fight?’

Lykos smirked. He kept the upper hand, pushing the sorceress back towards a corner of the terrace.

‘If I did not fight, I would die.’

‘Fight, then. Why speak?’

‘There is always someone speaking.’

‘Silence does not speak.’

Lykos' sword came within a hair of the sorceress' waist. She slipped out of reach. Lykos turned around, tried to place one foot behind the other, and hit his heel against the parapet. _Mataie_ , said a voice in his mind. He was trapped.

Struggling to breathe, he met the sorceress' gaze. She stepped forward, her brow smooth, her chest barely rising and falling. Lykos prepared his sword. The sun, not quite above him, blinded him. It would not be easy to find a way out of this. But at the sight of the sorceress' face, his doubts faded.

He had found his sign.

This would be an interesting duel.

* * *

Eleutheria watched the stranger's fist tighten around his hilt and prepared herself to end the duel. Her opponent had held his ground for longer than his round shoulders and rusty blade suggested he would, but he had inevitably made a mistake. As they all did.

Eleutheria riveted her eyes on the blue vein pulsating at his throat. Then she rushed forward.

The man did not parry. He crouched down, half-rose, threw himself onto the parapet, legs swinging after him, and rolled to avoid another hit; the sword barely scratched his wrist. He leapt to his feet in the blink of an eye. He stood poised on the brink of the void. Eleutheria's blade tore through the air again. The man sidestepped it, his toes skimming the parapet's edge.

Eleutheria climbed after him.

Four or five others had attempted to escape her this way; all had fallen. Eleutheria did not glance at the wrinkled sea far, far below her. She knew how to tease it. Twirling around with the breeze, she faced the man, her sword ready.

He spoke to her in a voice that mingled with the waves.

‘Silence speaks, _wanassa_. It tells us far more than most would think.’

Eleutheria raised an eyebrow. Strange for a man to speak like this. He held her gaze.

‘Why, then, do you speak over it?’

He attacked before she could finish her sentence. The swords danced around each other, their movement accompanied by a steady rhythm of metallic clangs. The sun painted the two fighting silhouettes onto the waves.

‘I do not speak above it,’ the man said between two parries. ‘I ask questions. It answers.’

Eleutheria kept up the onslaught, driving him back. He watched her from afar, a smile on his lips – ephemeral, discreet, but natural. So it was true. He was not lying. Eleutheria found herself wondering who he was, what had made him this way. What had led him to seek out silence?

She let the thought go. Soon it would mean nothing. The man's fingers had loosened around his hilt, and he was wiping a rivulet of blood mingled with sweat off his arm. Seizing the opportunity, Eleutheria stabbed at his throat.

The man reacted only just in time. He dodged the sword point and teetered for a heartbeat on the edge, then found his balance again and dashed towards Eleutheria. His blade did not touch her. Glimpsing a breach in his defence, she tore a gash into his shoulder. He retreated. Eleutheria did not grant him a moment to catch his breath. She followed up with an offensive, and the man withstood it, and the sun hauled itself to the top of the sky, and the _hekwetai_ waited wordlessly.

Not once did the man misstep.

Eleutheria gritted her teeth. He had to die. Had to. For fifteen years, she had preserved her island, her solitude, as civilisation after civilisation passed away: Wiluša first, burnt by the Akhaiwoi, then Mykenai and the Akhaiwoi themselves, then Alašiya, Keftiu, Ḫatti, Ugarit, Kana'an – all had crumbled and were still crumbling. Eleutheria alone lived on. In her father's day, the island had let the outside world in, but her father was dead, and no stranger would enter the palace again. Eleutheria had sworn it.

And this man, with his attentive eyes and voice blending into the breeze, would not be the exception.

Ignoring the growing ache in her muscles, adjusting her grip on the sword again, she dove towards him.

‘You draw myths from the sky and the land and the sea,’ the man panted. ‘Is that not conversing with silence?’

More questions. Eleutheria avoided the blade pointed at her chest and whirled around her opponent.

‘Perhaps. You do not seem troubled by the fact you are losing.’

‘Am I losing?’

Eleutheria clenched her jaw. No. He was not losing. He was not winning either, but even after so long, he would not weaken. He anticipated her every move, parried, swung around, challenged the gaping abyss. Eleutheria felt herself grow cold. It was like fighting against a mirror.

Who was he? What did he know about her? Someone must have betrayed her, beyond a doubt. She scanned the faces of her _hekwetai_. Whenever they left the island to trade, they did not say a word – their grey robes and her reputation spoke for them. Had one of them broken their oath? Why would they? They were just as happy in isolation as she was.

And yet the man was not relying on rumours – his behaviour was too astute. No. He was deducing.

He was reading her.

Better than anyone ever had.

* * *

Suddenly, the sorceress' attacks became fiercer. Lykos blinked and raised his sword defensively. His adversary's face was filled with new determination. She had understood.

‘You,’ she spat, ‘will not decipher me.’

Lykos shook his head. A strand of hair stuck to his nose. He did not have time to brush it away. The sorceress was drawing nearer, her blade showing reflections of the whirlpools below them.

‘You will not ensnare me. I am a daughter of the sky and the sea. I am sister to the wind. Nobody holds sway over me. Nobody.’

The sword sang as it sped towards Lykos. The bronze bit his cheek. He recoiled. The sorceress did not relent.

She spoke no more, but her eyes stayed ablaze.

Lykos concentrated on his hand holding the sword, on the soles of his feet pressing against the stones, on his burning muscles, on the blade darting towards him. He would not give in. Would not surrender. Not now. He had been fighting since childhood, could not remember a time when he did not have a weapon in his fist to defend himself against pillagers. He had fifteen years of experience in duelling. Time to put it to use.

He made himself look his opponent in the eye. If he lost, it would at least be an illustrious warrior who defeated him. He would disappear into the stillness of the sea, would join the ancient kings of Mykenai in oblivion, but just for a day, he would have lived in a myth – he would have met this serene, deadly woman and, briefly, matched her.

And recognised himself in her.

He narrowed his eyes with resolve. Opposite him, the sorceress did the same. They glared at each other for a long, long time.

Then they charged.

Their first clash drew blood from Lykos' forearm again; their second only cost the sorceress a lock of hair. She shook her head, curls fluttering, and aimed for Lykos' throat again. He stumbled sideways. The blade slid along his neck, over his collarbone and into the crack of his elbow.

He stifled a cry, and his sword escaped from his grip.

The clang of metal against rocks was lost in the hiss of the sea. Lykos faltered, pain blossoming along his right side. The water churned below his feet, his heels rested on nothing, the cliff dropped straight down to the reefs and he had to hold on, hold on to something before he fell –

The point of a sword touched his chest, and he lifted his head. The wind made the sorceress' hair quiver. The rest of her body was still.

And Lykos' hand was curled around her wrist.

* * *

If she struck, he would drag her down with him.

Eleutheria swallowed. The man had reacted so fast. As if, unconsciously, he had known where her movement would carry her. Where to reach for a hold.

He had paralysed her.

Blood dripped onto the parapet. The man did not look down. He had bright eyes, like the sky all around him.

Bright, and so calm.

* * *

‘How did you do it?’

Her tone was harsh, but no louder than a whisper. Lykos sought for words.

‘You move without a sound,’ he said.

‘That explains nothing.’

‘I cannot explain everything, _wanassa_. I recognise something in you. I can hear it.’

The sorceress' brow furrowed, only slightly.

‘Some people walk with silence, _wanassa_. We understand each other.’

She did not answer. A ripple travelled across her face, like a breeze over a field.

Her sword stayed against Lykos' chest.

The grey-clad servants did not move.

Two hundred cubits below them, the waves lapped the rocks.

* * *

Silence. Even the wind did not disturb it.

Eleutheria took in a deep breath to relieve the tension in her chest. The reassuring murmur of the sea rose to her ears. The world opened up all around her, clear, endless, as always – her haven. And the _hekwetai_ 's robes caressed the century-old flagstones, and the sun burned on the horizon.

And this man stood here, his feet marking the boundary between safety and void, and he had walked along the edge of the abyss with her, and he had not fallen. He had looked into the deep, seen through it, and danced with it. His silhouette had painted itself against the blue sky. And the sky was intact.

A man, a stranger, faced her.

And the silence still lasted.

* * *

Lykos felt the sword move before the woman was aware of it. Its point glided down his body to rest on the stone with a faint clink. The woman did not move.

‘Who are you?’ she breathed.

‘A villager from near Mykenai,’ he answered honestly. ‘Nothing more. They call me Lykos.’

He closed and opened his fists, suddenly ill at ease.

‘I did not come to challenge you. I understand you. I get called witless in my village, because I seek only ruins and solitude. I have not come to steal yours. All I am interested in here is tablets.’

He attempted a smile. She blinked. Then, slowly, she smiled back.

‘Which tablets?’

‘Any that mention Mykenai.’

She cleaned the blood off her sword. Sheathed it.

‘Follow me,’ she said.

* * *

She glanced outside one last time before stepping into the palace. The sky was fading to pink and the sea sighed, purred. Eleutheria traced the horizon with a finger before closing her eyes for a moment. The breeze carried the smell of seaweed to her.

Lykos stood nearby, and she did not turn to look at him. Right now, they were both alone. Side by side.

Beautifully free.


End file.
